I’ve been a huge Elder Scrolls fan ever since I first played TESIII: Morrowind in the early 2000s on an original Xbox. These are games I spend ludicrous amounts of time playing, usually getting so sidetracked in the world that it takes me years to get around to completing the main questline. I’ve even gone back and played the earlier titles on the PC and having moved to almost exclusively buying the series’ games on the PC and greatly appreciative of the modding community surrounding the game series.

On the MMO side of things, I’ve been a MMORPG gamer even longer, starting with Ultima Online in the late 90s. I’ve tried out more games in this genre over the years than I could possibly bother to name. The biggest standouts being the aforementioned, Ultima Online, City of Heroes/Villains, Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The question is, has Zenimax managed to blend the TES franchise with this genre to create a great game? Even a game worth playing?

Tomb Raider is an excessively well known franchise possessing a total of 11 games, 2 movies, 3 novels, a series of comic books, a 10-Episode Animated series, and an amusement park ride (formally four). While more recent entries in the game series and overall franchise have been met with mixed critical reception, the first two games in the series are best remembered for pioneering the Action-Adventure genre. I, like many people, know of the series more through its pop-culture prevalence over active participation in the franchise.

Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t played any Tomb Raider games. In addition to a handful of demos, I vaguely remember playing one of the original Core Design-developed titles and one of the lesser Crystal Dynamics-developed games. The fact that the Crystal Dynamics demo and game that I played had rather unfriendly controls and were overall mediocre is rather disappointing. I personally love the Action-Adventure genre and would probably rate it as my favorite overall, and I find the ideas of both the games’ Indiana Jones-esque setting and strong female protagonist very appealing.

Due to this I was quite interested, despite some of Crystal Dynamics’ previous work, in their upcoming re-imagining of the Tomb Raider series. All the way up to the March 5th, 2013 release date I followed information on the games’ development and even got to try a demo of the game at New York Comic Con 2012. Having been impressed with the demo and the apparent amount of work that the Crystal Dynamics’ development team was putting into the game, I acquired it upon release.»Read More

Well, E3 2012 has come and gone. Overall, it seems to have fallen short of last year’s show, not meeting the expectations that the beginning of a transition to a new generation of consoles generally brings. Though there were certainly some high points as well as some perplexedly odd and perhaps humorous moments. To start of my review/coverage of E3, I’ll begin with, unsurprisingly, the “Big 3”.»Read More

So for over a month now I have been mulling over what should be the first article on this site. Because beginnings are important, even if not always memorable in the long run. They create first impressions and set the tone for what is to come. It may seem an odd choice for the first item on a review site to not be what you would normally call a review, but I don’t want this to be a standard review site. So instead this, my site’s beginning, is to be an article on endings.

There has recently been a lot of talk about story, most especially endings, in video games due to the ‘controversial’ [Read: terrible] ending of Mass Effect 3. Now I’ll state right now, upfront, that I have not played Mass Effect 3. In fact, at the time of this writing I have not even played my way through Mass Effect 2. This is because I, unlike what often seems to be the entire rest of the gaming community, did not think Mass Effect [1] was absolutely the best thing ever. But that is a topic for another article. Suffice it to say that I have kept up on the story of the Mass Effect games, and I have seen the ending.

NOTE: AS THIS ARTICLE COVERS ENDINGS, SPOILERS ABOUND BEYOND THIS POINT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.»Read More